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Behind the Scenes: Krukows Klubhouse at Cal Poly Baseball

Krukows Klubhouse is the premier section at Cal Poly baseball with free food and drinks and a family-like vibe. The Klubhouse is named after Mike Krukow who is a Cal Poly baseball alumni and current San Francisco Giants commentator. Our group member, Ayrton Ostly, knew at the beginning of this class that he wanted us to do a story on Krukows. While digging through Mustang News archives we were surprised to see that there have been very few mentions of the Klubhouse and it hasn’t been reported on more. Seeing this, we were really excited to dive in.

Cal Poly Mustangs home team dugout with bleacher and Krukows Klubhouse seating at Baggett Stadium.

I immediately got working on the engagement report to see what exactly people knew about Krukows and what they would like to know. I reached out on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Surprisingly, I did not get much feedback. The feedback I did receive though was strictly people commenting on Facebook saying they had no idea what Krukows Klubhouse was! Learning this and relaying it to my team members showed us the best angle for the story was to shed light on what Krukows is all about, how to become a ticket holder, and the history behind it all.

While I did lock down three interviewees for my team, we were also hoping to be able to attend a Cal Poly baseball game in the Klubhouse to get video footage and interview ticket holders. Unfortunately, due to schedules not lining up and our busy lives we weren’t able to make a game. I don’t believe that hurt our story, more that it would have been a little stronger if we had the first hand experience of attending a game.

Group member Kameren Mikkelsen, who was in charge of the multimedia portion of this story, agreed with me on this stating “my main concern with this story was that half of our team was out of town during the last home game. It definitely made it a challenging, yet rewarding experience when we got it all finished!”

We were lucky enough to be able to talk to the Director of Cal Poly Athletics, Don Oberhelman. His interview was very insightful and super helpful in regards to getting the information we needed to run with the story. He was very knowledgeable (which didn’t come as a surprise being Director of Athletics).

Cal Poly Director of Athletics, Don Oberhelman, sits down with our team for an interview.

Team member Natsuki Nishikawa was also excited about being able to talk to Don saying “this story didn’t work quite as well as I expected, especially since none of us were actually able to go to Krukow’s and see what it’s like. But I think the interview with the Athletics Director was nice and talking to a student about his experiences there helped too.”

Speaking of students, I got us an interview with Esteban Ramos, a student who has been attending baseball games for three years now at Krukows. He explained what it’s like to attend a game by saying “it’s not just a keg frat party in college. It’s a pretty fun environment that’s family friendly. You’ll get a little bit of rowdiness, not too much, but it’s not just coming from students. It’s coming from alumni and parents too.” That was really cool for our group to hear because until learning about what it’s actually like up there, it seemed like it would just be a place to get drunk and loud.

Esteban Ramos, Cal Poly student and frequent Krukows Klubhouse attendee during our interview.
Ayrton Ostly who was in charge of the broadcast portion of this story stated lastly that “it’s been interesting to see and hear how Krukow’s is more than just an area to watch Cal Poly baseball. It’s like a social event for community members and people in general to hang out and spend time together.” I have to agree with him. Even though as I said we weren’t able to actually attend a game, we feel that our story captures what the Klubhouse is from the interviews we conducted. Our hope is that we engage readers with this story and hopefully spread the word about something so unique to our campus that everyone should have the chance to check out at least once in their Cal Poly career.